Project Option: Methods + Stats

Before you decide to focus in this direction, I want to be sure you understand a few things.

1. READ THIS NOW, then bookmark it for later.
2. You're not expected to know how to do intense statistical procedures before you go to graduate school. Ideally, you'll know and understand the basics (quant vs. qual, reliability & validity, what a correlation is vs. a linear regression - things like that).
3. Even advanced statisticians DO NOT usually conduct data analysis without rechecking how they are doing it against a book/program + other researchers regularly. (I have entire books which hang out in my office until I need to do a certain stat test again, then I pull them out, check my assumptions etc., double check I've got everything done right, then run my test. Then I have someone check my work usually, just in case.) So this is very much an 'open book, open note' kind of field of knowledge - keep that in mind as you're learning!

• I recommend working through this ALONG with one of the items below (unless they already have real data examples in them, then you can skip the OSL.)
  • Open Stats Lab: Work through examples of real-world data sets (these are prepped for teachers, but you can self-teach with them too/we can work through them together)

• Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Work through this open course + textbook (or use it for reference as needed)
  • If you need to focus on survey research, try this course instead: https://www.coursera.org/learn/questionnaire-design
• Coursera Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences Specialization: Work through this open course + textbook (or use it for reference as needed)
• If you want to learn R or Data Science specifically (the current trends), try these options:
  • First, here's what R is and why it works the way it does: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2497143/business-intelligence-beginner-s-guide-to-r-introduction.html
  • Fave! Open book specifically on R & Social Science stats: https://learningstatisticswithr.com/book/why-do-we-learn-statistics.html
  • https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-science-foundations-r#courses
  • https://www.rstudio.com/online-learning/

SPSS is a viable alternative to R, but it's EXPENSIVE and some schools don't teach it anymore. If you have access to it (you will likely have to buy it) and think you'll use it/prefer it (it is more user friendly than R at first, with a lower learning curve, but it's still programming in a sense - all stats software involves some level of programming)...

• What is SPSS?? https://www.spss-tutorials.com/spss-what-is-it/
• SPSS @ UA: https://softwarelicense.arizona.edu/students - SPSS can be bought from the UA Technology Bookstore at a discount.